9 Things You Didn’t Know About Sunflowers

Sunflowers. What would a summer garden be without them? We love them for the bold and brilliant vertical accents they contribute to our gardens; their seeds we bake for tasty, nutritious snacks; and their flowers beautiful in the garden and in bouquets. Pollinators love their flowers; birds love their seeds (if we leave them in the garden). Just another pretty annual for our gardens, right? Nope.

Sunflowers have an amazing history. I recently read the book Sunflowers (The Secret History) by Joe Pappalardo. It took this plant nerd along the historical timeline of sunflowers from prehistoric times through world wars and even into space.

Native
to North America, Native Americans cultivated sunflowers for many uses. The
seeds were eaten as snacks, ground into flour, and squeezed into oil. Dried
stalks were used in building. They also used sunflower plants medicinally,
cosmetically and ceremonially.

Early
explorers sent seeds back to Europe as early as the 1500’s. But it was in Russia,
however, that sunflowers became a major agricultural crop. Oil was squeezed
from seeds in the 1700’s, and by the early 1800’s, more than two million acres
in Russia were planted with sunflowers.

Canada started growing sunflowers for oil production in the early 1900’s. Northern states in the U.S. followed suit and more than five million acres were in sunflower cultivation in the late 1900’s.

Who
knew? Here are some amazing facts about sunflowers.

Wild
sunflower seeds can remain viable in the soil for ten years.

The
head of a sunflower is made up of up to 4,000 tiny flowers that become the
sunflower’s seeds.

Fossilized
poop found in caves in the southwestern United States provide evidence
sunflowers were part of man’s diet 6,000 years ago.

Lewis
and Clark munched on sunflower seeds while waiting at a fur-trading station for
Sacagawea.

Russia
found the best type of sunflower for making oil in the late 1700’s and it is
still used today.

Hitler’s
interest in Russia’s fields of seed-oil producing sunflowers was one of the
reasons they invaded Russia in World War II.

Sunflowers
became part of the space program when sunflowers were exposed to lunar soil
returned from Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions.

Eighty-five
dwarf sunflowers took a ride on the Columbia space shuttle in 1981.

Sunflowers
were used to help clean up the radioactive pollution of Chernobyl. “Sunflowers
removed 95 percent of the pond’s cesium and strontium within ten days,” states
Papalardo.

Pretty
interesting, right?

So, while we enjoy their bright and cheerful faces and the food they offer bees in the summer and birds in the winter, remember the important part sunflowers have played in the history of mankind.

2 thoughts on “9 Things You Didn’t Know About Sunflowers”

Hi Jerry. Here’s what I do when I cut sunflowers for bouquets. First I make sure the plants themselves are well hydrated. Then I cut flowers with long stems in the early morning, choosing flowers that are just beginning to open. I put them immediately in a bucket of very warm water (and try to keep the bucket of flowers out of direct sunlight). Before arranging in the house, I remove all the lower leaves so none will be submerged in the water and make another cut of the stem. Other hints to extend the beauty of the bouquet include changing the water in the vase every other day or so and keeping the bouquet out of direct sunlight. Good luck with your sunflower bouquets, Jerry, and thanks for reading!